Gremlins: “Fun, but in no sense civilized”

Produced by one of the most influential Hollywood personalities, (especially when it comes to family-friendly adventures), Steven Spielberg’s Gremlins seems like the perfect movie to put on for the kids during Christmastime. A story about cute, loveable, little furry creatures who turn into green monsters and try to destroy a suburban town, does, at first glance, seem quite family-friendly. However, this 80s movie looks and feels nothing like E.T. or Goonies; its adult lines about death, obscure jokes, and violence throughout the movie, might make you wonder why it has become such a childrens’ classic.

The bizarre placement of the film in the kids’ section faced critique at the time of its release;  “I’ve no idea how children will react to the sight of a Kingston Falls mom, carving knife in hand, decapitating one gremlin and shoving another into the food processor, head first. Will they laugh when Billy Peltzer, the film’s idealized, intentionally dopey, 20-year-old hero, is threatened by a gremlin with a chainsaw and then stabbed by a gremlin with a spear gun? Will they cheer when Billy blows up the Kingston Falls movie theater, where the gremlins, now resembling an average kiddie matinee crowd, are exuberantly responding to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?” The film’s director, Joe Dante, agreed with such criticism, stating that; “It begins like It’s a Wonderful Life but ends like The Birds.”

Gremlins begins in a setting inspired by the Christmas classic’s Bedford Falls - not dissimilar from It’s a Wonderful Life. Gremlins’ Kingston Falls is the American Dream: perfect driveways, perfect houses, perfect never-melting snow, and perfect white people singing Christmas carols. Joe Dante creates a comically idealized setting for his horrendously grotesque Christmas tale, only to tear it apart as the sweet creatures turn into murderous poltergeists, who try to kill every human they encounter.  

Those shiny, happy, white people we see in the movie, however, do appear to experience some real-life problems - another aspect that renders the film less a kid’s tale, and more a social critique of the American Way of Life. The film’s narrator, Randall Peltzer is a frustrated inventor trying to live off of his dreams, in a capitalistic world of market monopolies and the fetishization of brands. One of the richest ladies in town repeatedly threatens to torture and kill the Peltzer’s dog, even though it doesn’t seem to do anything to deserve such threats. More hermetically than those issues, virtually every single character seems to encounter struggles with the bank, denoting the unfair distribution of wealth in the average American town, Kingston Falls.

More overtly problematic is his son’s co-worker, Kate Beringer. Kate recounts a story about how her father died while dressing up as Santa-Claus, and was found in the family’s chimney a few hours into the celebration. She concludes her horrifying Christmas tragedy by adding that it was then that she found out that Santa-Claus did not exist.  

Another set of lines that remind the audience about the film’s satirical quality, also happens to address an issue that surrounds the film as a whole: xenophobia. At the beginning of the film, Murray Futterman, the Peltzers’ neighbor, comes out of his house babbling about foreign cars, and how superior US technology supposedly is; “Always freezing up on you. You don’t see that with American cars. You see that plow? Fifteen years old and hasn’t given me a day’s trouble in fifteen years. You know why? Kentucky Harvester. It ain’t some foreign piece of crap you pick up these days. Damn foreign cars.” 

The same old man, who we later find out is a World War II veteran, goes on with his rail against foreign technologies, alleging that these are the gremlins of the film’s title; “How’d you like to bring your car in for a tune-up and find it loaded with foreign parts?! Gremlins! You gotta watch out for them foreigners because they place gremlins in the machinery! They put ‘em in the cars, they put ‘em in the TVs, they put ‘em in the stereos, in the radios you stick in your ears! They put ‘em in the watches! I got teeny tiny gremlins in my watches!” 

Thus, Dante’s critique starts to build up, uncovering the film as a trenchant attack on US foreign policy and popular customs. The United States’ policies under Reagan were focused on fighting communism blatantly through the use of force, and maintaining the dissemination of consumerism, as a means of combating anything that differed from the American Way. As a result, the average white American began to grow suspicious of foreigners, with the government perpetuating an image of foreigners as people who would threaten their good, national morals, whilst hypocritically, still relying on foreign toys and gadgets as their go-to Christmas gifts. 

That's where Gizmo enters the story, the Chinese pet which Randall bought his son for Christmas. As the narrator enters Chinatown, trying to sell one of his inventions, he hears the Mogwai’s delightful chant, and tries to buy it. Being denied by the seemingly wise old man who owned the store, the American manages to buy it through the boy working there, who recognized the store’s need for income. Despite irresponsibly selling Gizmo, the boy does give Peltzer three important warnings about the pet, which would all be ignored, ultimately driving Kingston Falls to chaos.  

Dante creates an allegory for the situation whereby, despite being culturally distrustful of all things foreign, Americans insist on appropriating others’ cultures when it is in their interest. Gizmo represents this reliance on cultural appropriation as a way to find special gifts for friends and family, especially during Christmas. By removing things from their cultural and social context, however, people tend to end up with nothing but problems - aside from the blatant disrespect inherent in cultural appropriation.

As a conclusion to the film’s revolutionary praxis, the old Chinese man, Mr. Wing, comes over to get Gizmo back from the Peltzers, delivering his eastern knowledge; “You do with mogwai what your society has done to all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand. You are not ready,” in an obvious response to everything imperialistic cultures have done since the outset of capitalism. From the use of natural resources to the issue of cultural appropriation, Western, capitalist societies and free-market economies have left all of nature’s gifts shattered - and not only nature’s gifts but also man’s creations, such as Christmas itself. Gremlins depicts the commercialization of Christmas as a date for consumption above celebration, of threat above infatuation, and maybe even of horror above the merry-go-round of Christmastime celebration.